I strode into school on Monday morning with my head held high. There was a sense of accomplishment dancing in my chest that hadn't left me since I limped through the front door of my house and jumped into a nice hot bath after conquering the first step of Hemingway manhood. My tree had been planted. If it grew, that was just icing on the cake.

My foot was still bleeding a bit, and I had to change my band-aid every couple of hours to make sure I wasn't going to go into toxic shock. The hole in my foot was still pretty big. It was also kind of gross.

"How'd it go?" Viktor asked as he walked up to our lockers.

I'd been sitting there for about five minutes when he showed up. I jumped up from the ground and happily regaled Viktor with the adventures of my tree-planting day. The squirrel became three pounds heavier, and the stick had nearly taken my foot completely off in my retelling, but Viktor loved every second of the story.

"An eagle plucked it out of the sky?" he demanded.

"Right in front of my face," I said. "If it was just an inch wider in wingspan, it would have tried to snatch and eat me too."

"Do you think the bear still has your boots?"

"He can keep them. Marty McFly never got his boots back."

"No, he did not! Hey, you're as manly as Marty McFly!"

Marty McFly wasn't exactly the poster child for heavy-duty manliness. He was more manly than me, though, so I was headed in the right direction.

"What's next?" Viktor asked. "That one took a lot longer than we thought it would. You're not exactly giving yourself a lot of time to get the other three done. Are you still writing your journal?"

"Every day," I replied. It wasn't that big a lie. Once a week was closer to the truth, but I couldn't dredge up nightmares and memories every day. I'd go crazy.

"What about fighting a bull? Any further developments?"

"No, I had to use my entire first paycheck to pay for tree stuff, so my saving-for-Spain account is still sitting at a big fat zero."

"And I suppose having a son is still..."

"Shut it, Viktor. You're being pretty unconstructive right now."

"Deconstructive."

"Shut it."

We stood in silence for a second. I wasn't really mad at him, just frustrated with the situation. I'd been thinking about the list ever since I'd finished the tree planting. Along with the sense of accomplishment came a weight of commitment. I was on the way now, and I couldn't let up.

"How long have we known each other, Viktor?"

"You looking for a number or something?"

"Just tell me."

"Since Grade Three, I think. A little less than ten years."

"Yeah, that's about how long I was figuring."

"Why?"

"How many girlfriends would you say I've had in that time? And not just little weirdo dates here or there. I'm talking full-on, we held hands and kissed by the bus stop, girlfriends."

Viktor furrowed his brow. It was more than just your everyday furrow, I think his brows actually switched sides and went around to the back of his head. I had to laugh.

"Don't hurt yourself, man," I said. "The answer is zero."

"Really zero?" he said.

"Zero. Who can blame them? I don't enjoy my own company most days, so how could I expect anyone else to?"

Viktor frowned. "I enjoy your company."

"Viktor, we've been over this. Although going out with you would be both convenient and easy, neither of us is gay and you can't provide me with the one thing I need more than anything right now."

"Steady companionship and dinner when you get home?"

I laughed again. "A kid, you tool."

"So a female type person is more what you're after."

"You could say that."

Viktor reached into his locker and pulled out his art supplies.

"Who did you have in mind?" Viktor asked as he closed his locker. I grabbed my French books and shut my locker.

"Sarah Bilkworth," I replied.

I waited for Viktor's derisive laugh, or sarcastic remark about my impossible choice for mother of my child.

"You're aiming pretty high for first girlfriend," he said. "Let alone the mother of your son."

"I know."

"Why her?"

"Attractive, higher than average intelligence..."

"Higher than average?"

"She can read, and she doesn't talk in that singsong way most hot girls do."

"Continue."

"Good social skills and fantastically huge and perky breasts."

It was Viktor‟s turn to laugh.

"I'll agree with you on most points about Sarah Bilkworth. I don't know about her intelligence, but there is no denying her popularity, physical attractiveness or glorious breasts. There is only one glaring problem that I can see."

"What?"

"As you mentioned, you've never gone out with anybody. Shouldn't you get at least a little experience before you go for the big prize?"

I hadn't thought of that. If I somehow, under some wondrous and miraculous set of circumstances managed to convince Sarah Bilkworth to entertain the thought of dating me, I had no idea how to hold on to her for long enough to have a son with her. The very thought of asking her out was terrifying me, and if I tried I would probably pee my pants and run away crying.

Maybe having the son was the easy part, and the landing of the good woman to have your son with you was the hard part. That Hemingway was one sadistic son of a bitch. After my tree planting debacle, which I had thought was going to be the easy one and now had a hole in my foot directly as a result of said tree planting, the second task was looking more and more epic by the second.

"What do you mean, experience?" I asked as we walked to our respective classes.

"I mean try dating someone before you go after Sarah Bilkworth," Viktor explained. "Make it a public thing. Show everyone that you're capable of being in a relationship. No matter how far down the social ladder you are, and trust me my friend, you're near the bottom, people always notice when people start going out. That way you'll have a little more confidence and a slightly better chance at convincing Sarah Bilkworth to go out with you."

I couldn't think of anyone that would ever go out with me. I had a huge crush on my French teacher, Mlle. Trottier, but that was only because she had an insane French accent that made every guy in the class swoon. She had seven fingers on her right hand, though, and that was just gross. A relationship between us would never work, because I wouldn't be able to get past the hepahand she carried around at the end of her right arm.

"Who?" I asked as we got to my French classroom. The art class was down another hallway, right beside the gym. Artistry and athleticism side by side at last. Viktor gave me a knowing smile and pushed the French classroom door open. The class was about to start, and I saw Jodi sitting near the back with her sweater draped across the chair next to her. She looked over at me in the doorway and beckoned me to her, indicating that she'd saved the seat for me. It was nice to see her.

"I think you know exactly who," said Viktor, and he disappeared down the hallway. I watched him go, unsure of what to do. I turned back to face Jodi, who was smiling at me in such a sweet way that I instantly felt better. I walked into the classroom and sat down beside her. She smelled like cinnamon, and as she took her sweater from behind me, I got a full blast of her perfume.

"It's good to see you," she said.

"You too," I said.

Dad loves smoking. He smokes twenty of those little sticks every day, puffing out a translucent cloud of bluish vapour that follows him everywhere all day long. It smells comfortable. It smells safe. 

I know that we're all going to be in for an interesting ride the day I come home from school and I don't smell the smell. I open the door, expecting the blast of smoke to hit me after coming in from the fresh air, expecting it so much that I'm actually stopped in my tracks in the front hallway because it doesn't hit me. 

"Dad?"

My mother pokes her head out of the kitchen. She looks at me with 'what a day' eyes, and shakes her head.

"He's quit again."

This is bad news. Most families would rejoice if their patriarch finally decided to drop a deadly habit after injecting his lungs with noxious chemicals every day for nearly thirty years. Maybe somewhere deep down inside I was rejoicing. The joy would come in the long term, if he stuck with it. I couldn't care less about the long term. Our short term was about to become a living nightmare.

"Where the hell is the remote?"

He's in the living room, ripping cushions off of the couch and flinging them across the room. A cat, I couldn't remember which one, either Horton or Who, was rudely rousted from a deep sleep. I go to see if I can help, because I know that he'll end up kicking the TV in if he can't find the remote before too long. It's happened before.

I take one look at him and know that this quit isn't going to take. He just isn't ready for it.

"Dad, the remote's in your back pocket."

He either doesn't hear me or pretends not to. He starts checking the fireplace for the remote. Reason and logic have left the vicinity.

"Hey Dad, have you checked your back pocket yet?"

There's a distinct snorting, rhinoceros type vibe coming off of the man I call my father. This is his mid-level mad. He has three levels of anger. The first level is a peevish tone, clipped speech, and a general disappointed aura. The second level is the blustery, stomping around looking for something to piss on kind of fury. Nothing really comes of it, but he could yell the wings off an airplane if he really put his mind to it. He might blow his lungs out, but he‟d make damn sure he took everyone on the plane down with him. 

I'd only ever seen the third level once. 

I reach out and deftly swipe the remote from his back pocket. He doesn't even notice, and keeps shoving his hand into the cracks underneath the couch cushions, undoubtedly raking his hands over years of crumbs and pennies. As he works through the left hand side moving right, I swoop in and shove the remote just behind the far right couch cushion. That way he'll find it and feel like he's accomplished something. If I handed it to him now, I'd be accused of hiding it on purpose just to piss him off, and I'd have to endure some blatantly unfair punishment. My mum could usually talk sense into him and get my sentence reduced, but sometimes there was just no budging the man.

Dad gets to the end of the couch and lets out a bellow of triumph. He makes no move to apologize to the rest of us or even acknowledge that we were trying to help. The third round of some golf tournament gets flicked on, and that's all we'll get from Dad until dinnertime.